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Saturday, 16 September 2017

What's happening at the wizard's conference?

If I have to keep going to these things, I might as well turn them into gaming materials, right?

Most of these are based on things that have happened at academic conferences I've been to, but with added wizards. Many are rather anachronistic for medieval settings, although in some cases probably less so than you might expect. Some aspects of academic life have changed surprisingly little in the last eight hundred years.

In the main hall (roll 1d8):

Keynote address on the state of modern magical theory. The guest speaker was allocated forty minutes: he's now been talking for two and a half hours and shows no sign of slowing down, but his seniority is such that no-one dares ask him to stop. Many of the more elderly listeners have fallen asleep.

Immediate aftermath of a contentious lecture by a rising academic star, provocatively entitled 'Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong'. The post-lecture 'debate' has devolved into a screaming match, with supporters and opponents of the speaker on their feet and hurling abuse at each other while the chair desperately tries to restore order. The speaker herself watches serenely from her podium, unpeturbed by the chaos she has unleashed.

Annual general meeting of the magical order, at which it elects its officials. Rival cliques within the order have been planning for this for months, and are determined to get their chosen candidates into the most influential positions. People keep yelling things like 'Point of order!' and 'I propose the Archmagister Esmerelda!' and 'I second the Necrolord Abraxus!'

Extremely abstruse dissertation on an obscure area of magical philosophy, delivered by a noted expert in her small and rarefied academic field. No-one in the audience can understand a word of it, but they don't want to risk looking stupid by admitting it, so they're all nodding sagely instead. The more cynical members of the audience are privately wondering if she's just senile, but how could you be sure?

Award ceremony. Relays of indefatigable speakers are listing every quality of every work which was considered for the award, and every reason why the winner was chosen, and every detail of the career of the person to whom it has been awarded, and it just goes on and on and on. The winner is standing at the front in full academical dress, obviously desperate for all this to be over so that she can launch into her acceptance speech and start making not-so-subtle digs at her academic rivals.

Memorial service. One of the senior wizards has died between this conference and the last one, and now the stage is full of lachrymose magicians delivering anecdotes about their long-gone student days together, and how the field will never see her like again. An official with a big bag moves threateningly through the audience, extorting money from the delegates to fund the new magical laboratory which is supposed to be built in her honour.

A junior wizard has been granted a chance to address the conference, and is making a misguided attempt to appear excitingly transgressive by delivering a presentation full of graphically weird sex stuff. No-one is shocked, and no-one is impressed.

Technical problems. There was supposed to be a big, complex display of spectacularly advanced sorcery, but there's been a problem with the reagents and now the conference organiser is stalling frantically while his minions run desperately from lab to lab, trying to locate an alternative stash of purple lotus flowers. Seven very powerful wizards have travelled a very long way to make this demonstration, and now stand muttering in a semi-circle at the back of the stage. If no-one manages to appease them soon then they are going to start turning people into toads.

In the seminar rooms (roll 1d10):

A panel of low-status junior wizards dutifully delivering papers on their research to an audience of two, one of whom is the boyfriend of one of the speakers. Everyone else is either too hungover to have got up yet, or attending a talk being given by someone much more important in the next room.

An anxious junior wizard is delivering an academic paper as though his whole future depended on it, which it probably does. He's pulled out all the stops - mobile illusions as visual aids, daring arguments, incredible displays of scholarship - but he's getting more and more nervous, speaking faster and faster as he goes on. An audience of senior magicians watch coolly and critically from the back.

The favoured apprentice of a leading archmage - charismatic, good-looking, well-dressed, horribly slick - is delivering a paper heavy on confidence and rhetorical fireworks but light on actual scholarship, while his tutor smiles and nods indulgently. All the other apprentices stare daggers at him and secretly long for him to humiliate himself as spectacularly as possible.

A gladiatorial display. Audience members fire questions at a brilliant young speaker regarding the paper she's just delivered; she answers each one with grace and flair, but the queries just keep coming and she's obviously beginning to tire. The most senior wizards lurk at the back, sharpening the wording of their questions like an assassin's daggers, waiting to move in for the kill.

Three junior wizards are delivering a 'joint panel' - except as it goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer that one of the three has actually reached completely different conclusions to the other two, who make increasingly desperate attempts to qualify his assertions while signalling ever-more unsubtly for him to just shut up already. The audience is loving it.

Hilarious paper being delivered by a junior wizard, who has managed to make magical theory not just interesting but funny, at least if you get all the in-jokes. The audience are in stitches, howling with laughter and clapping wildly every time he delivers such showstopper punchlines as: '...because it was actually abjuration magic all along!' A couple of non-wizard attendants are watching in total bemusement.

Fashion competition death match. Three senior wizards with reputations as academic style icons, all dressed in their most extravagant hats and robes, are posing and preening at the front of the room. Supposedly they're delivering academic papers, but no-one is even pretending to listen as they stalk and strut, competing to display their profiles to best advantage and to ensure that they are standing in the most flattering light.

Some buffoon is delivering an 'avant-garde art performance' in place of his paper, as a 'meta-commentary on the repressive nature of academic institutions' - presumably including the one which paid for him to attend this conference in the first place. He's currently capering around in a fake horse's head while the audience watches aghast.

Roundtable discussion on 'how to build a career in the magical professions' has degenerated into all-in bitching sessions by apprentices about the many and varied failings of their tutors, none of whom could be bothered to attend.

An execution by firing squad. A luckless apprentice has antagonised the wrong people, and the senior magicians have turned up to his paper en masse in order to make an example of him. Now a cabal of wizards are mercilessly shredding his argument right in front of him under the cover of 'offering constructive criticism', while he dutifully records his many and varied academic failings in note form and tries very, very hard not to cry.

Outside (roll 1d8):

'Informal' social event with drinks. The conference attendees have swiftly sorted themselves into cliques based on academic status, and refuse to socialise with anyone except their peers. Occasionally a naive young wizard attempts to approach a senior clique to 'network' with his betters and gets ruthlessly slapped down.

Guided tour snaking its way through the grounds of the host institution, its route carefully planned to take in all the most impressive parts and avoid all the embarrassing bits. The guide is a rather panicky apprentice who is having great difficulty keeping his charges from wandering off.

Ceremonial unveiling of a sycophantic mural in honour of the single most important wizard attending the conference. She is depicted as a wise, regal, sternly beautiful figure, surrounded by quotations from her most famous works. The rather less impressive-looking original preens herself nearby, surrounded by fawning admirers.

Servants setting up tables with tea, coffee, and pastries. A particularly overweight senior wizard has arrived early, and is eating the pastries almost as fast as the servants can put them out.

Junior wizard running sprinting from building to building, obviously totally lost, yelling 'FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!' at the top of his voice. He's ten minutes late for his extremely important twenty-minute paper and he just cannot find the right room.

Small group of junior wizards talking excitedly about what a great opportunity it is to be here. Nearby a small group of senior wizards stand grumbling about how boring the conference is, and how the food was better last year.

Junior wizard having a panic attack in the shrubbery. She's due on stage in five minutes and she cannot do this. What if they laugh at her? What if they laugh?

An excursion! A cavalcade of wizards are setting off, by carriage, to visit some famous location in the nearby region: a temple, palace, stone circle, or similar. Sitting next to a senior wizard means having almost uninterrupted access to them for the whole of the two-hour journey, and competition for the best seats is complex and murderous, with ambitious young magicians trying to work out the exact moment at which they need to make their move in order to end up sitting in the right coach.

In the evening (roll 1d10):

Lavish conference dinner. Tables groaning under the weight of food and drink. Senior wizards gorging themselves silly. Junior wizards nervously sipping wine and wondering how on earth they're going to afford their share of the bill.

Interminable formal dance recital held in honour of one of the conference organisers. Everyone is bored stiff but too polite to leave. Mutinous band of apprentices at the back is seriously considering trying to sneak out under the cover of invisibility spells.

Band of apprentices and junior wizards sitting by a lake in the moonlight, settling in for a bout of serious drinking. Lots of rambling conversations about magic, sentimental declarations of friendship, and surreptitious vomiting in the bushes.

Group of drunken senior wizards singing, dancing, and making fools of themselves, while their appalled apprentices watch from the sidelines. Both the songs and the dances were fashionable about fifty years ago. Neither they nor their performers have aged well.

Roaming bands of junior wizards 'sampling the local nightlife', barging into bars, drinking stupid cocktails, and generally being obnoxious. Locals stare at them balefully wherever they go.

A pair of senior wizards slip away together into the night, giggling like schoolchildren, their arms around each other's waists. They are both definitely married, and not to each other - but what happens at the conference stays at the conference, right?

In the corner of an old pub, a gaggle of junior wizards surround a senior magician, vying for her attention. They compete frantically to impress her with the best jokes, the most colourful anecdotes, and the most dazzling displays of academic knowledge, while she sips sherry and listens to them with benign indifference.

A cabal of apprentices sit muttering in a public square, pooling their meagre supplies of knowledge and gossip to try to work out what's really going on within their order and how best to advance themselves within it. All their conclusions produced by their increasingly conspiratorial logic are utterly incorrect, but they have no way of knowing this.

Under the influence of one too many drinks, an extremely senior wizard has just revealed that he loves to sing the old traditional folk songs of his homeland. Who wants to join him in a few rousing old ballads? All around him, his colleagues are steeling themselves for what they know is likely to be a very long night...

The real event: at a table in a private room at the best restaurant in town, the four or five most important (not necessarily the most senior) people at the conference are having a serious conversation about what their magical order is going to do over the next few years. This meeting is the real reason the conference takes place: everything else is just camouflage. No-one else has been informed that this meeting is taking place.

You're players might be bored out of their skulls, but others probably wouldn't be. And even if they would be bored, make the conference the setting.

For example, you need to talk to one specific Wizard, and he's there. Or you need a specific spell, and the spell's inventor will be here, for a few short days. Or you are part of a Wizard conspiracy, and are there to do something nefarious.

Or just give them an open brief - 'try to use the conference in order to gain allies and contacts within the order - and leave it up to them to exploit it to their devious little heart's content. Most of these situations are fraught with opportunities for dramatic interventions, after all...

I missed the one guy (always a guy) who represents the "unfairly neglected" theory/method and who will stand up after or during your talk and ask a question (really a statement) that dismisses everything you've done as worthless.

I had a variant of that in my draft version - the paper delivered by someone totally wedded to a very specific theory which no-one else cares about (or gave up on twenty years ago), but I dropped it because it didn't offer much space for PC intervention. But you're quite right: putting Mr Have-You-Considered-The-Lacanian-Perspective in the *audience*, instead, makes for a much more fraught situation...

Long ago I found a book that detailed the lives of students and the state of "academia" at the medieval universities... it was VERY D&Dish all the way, including open brawls in the streets over rivalries. Dang, that was more than 20 years ago... I wonder whst that book was...

(Fun fact: the medieval 'mob quad' in Merton College, Oxford, may have gained its name because it was where the students used to rally together to fight the townfolk during the frequent town-vs-gown rioting...)

Presenting for the first time is definitely a rite-of-passage. And, you absolutely don't want to screw it up. Especially introducing the esteemed elder magician, that the university is VERY FORTUNATE that he chose this place to reside, as "Mr.".

X. Esteemed visiting sage is being introduced by a local wizard, with full titles, discoveries, and personal biography. Regardless of when the characters arrive or how long they stay, the introduction never ends.